H-1B Visa: IBM Consulting Ends Sponsorship for Most Roles as the Extension-Rule Comment Window Closes November 13

"H-1b visa" was the No. 1 search in the United States on the Google Trends snapshot updated early Thursday, and the news underneath it landed in two parts this week. IBM is ending H-1B visa and green-card sponsorship for the majority of roles in IBM Consulting, the company's largest business division, which employs more than 150,000 people globally. An IBM spokesperson confirmed the decision to Reuters, saying the consulting business had participated in US high-skilled visa programmes to address skill shortages, but that participation had been declining for a number of years and, as skill availability and client need evolved, the company opted to discontinue sponsorship for the majority of those roles.

The decision is specific to IBM Consulting and is not a company-wide withdrawal of sponsorship, the reports said. According to a company document reviewed by Bloomberg, employees affected by the decision have two options: continue working for IBM outside the United States, or leave the company by the end of 2026. IBM has not publicly disclosed how many employees are affected or which roles are covered, and its announcement does not mean every existing H-1B visa held by an IBM employee has been cancelled. IBM attributed the change to skill availability and client requirements, not directly to the administration's enforcement drive, though the Labour Department's inspector general, Anthony D'Esposito, answered it on X: "Funny how the corporate calculus changes when scrutiny shows up."

The second part is a rule, not a company. The Department of Homeland Security published a proposal on October 14 - "Removing Deference to Prior USCIS Determinations of Eligibility," Docket No. USCIS-2026-0529 - that would remove the regulation requiring immigration officers to generally defer to a prior approval when the same worker and employer seek an extension. The change would apply to every Form I-129 category, including H-1B and L-1, and officers would assess each extension afresh. The public comment window closes on November 13, and comments are accepted only through regulations.gov; the current regulation stays in force unless and until a final rule takes effect.

The extension docket is where the numbers concentrate. USCIS approved about 399,000 H-1B petitions in fiscal 2024, 71 percent of them for workers born in India; of roughly 258,000 approvals for continuing employment - the extension category this rule targets - about 203,000, or 79 percent, went to Indian-born workers. Homeland Security estimates about 208,000 petitions a year would be directly affected, generating roughly 6,000 additional evidence requests a year; petitions that draw such a request took an average of 64 days longer to process over the last four fiscal years. The backdrop is a year of tightening: a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions announced in 2025, and October's suspension of Microsoft, Adobe and several large outsourcing firms from the green-card labour certification process.